Last Friday, Rachel Maddow featured Texts from Hillary as the Best New Thing in the World Today:

The best thing about the internet has never been the way it allows everyone to be a writer, or that it lets you have friends all over the world. Those are awesome things, to be sure, but the best thing has been the seemingly endless supply of memes. Whether it's LOLCats and their many imitators, babies who love Betty White and laugh at dogs, awareness of all internet traditions, or Cats That Look Like Hitler, the internet has for the last fifteen years provided us with an every-more-necessary dose of silly.

Hillary Clinton would seem to be an odd choice for an internet meme, but Texts From Hillary spread so quickly that its creators found themselves with an invitation from the Secretary of State herself:

Two gays walk into a bar ...

... and out they walk, less than a week later, from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's office, laughing all the way.

The two communications professionals -- Lambe works on clean energy and Smith on campaign finance reform -- went for drinks a week back. It was that recent? Yes. "We were on the rooftop of Nellie's last Wednesday," Smith tells Metro Weekly.

The photo of Clinton looking tough, calm and in charge "in a military C-17 plane from Malta bound for Tripoli, Libya October 18, 2011," as the original Reuters story captions it, became the topic of discussion.

Once Lambe returned home and launched the Tumblr site, the meme was born. Diana Walker's black-and-white photo shot for Time and Kevin Lamarque's photo for Reuters became the underlying foundation of an internet laugh that has outlasted many others. Besides cats.

Looking at the many Anna Wintour, Meryl Streep (below, left), Rachel Maddow and Arianna Huffington posts on the Tumblr, one can't help but notice a bit of a pattern.

"I just kept coming up with perfect results of people like Anna Wintour and Meryl Streep on their phones, and there's just this natural alignment. I think a lot of people associate those three women in similar circles," Lambe says by phone this afternoon. "Having seen a couple of videos of Meryl Streep introducing Hillary Clinton at the women's summit, there's just this camaraderie there. There's just so much respect between those two women, you can't help but have this awesome little exchange that you think might happen.

"I may be only speaking for me, but I'm sure a lot of gay men, gay women too, have a lot of respect for them."

Talking with Smith today after he and Lambe left their meeting with Clinton, he laughs.

"It was sort of unbelievable. Her staff had emailed us yesterday, said that they liked the site and that the Secretary wanted to meet us. They asked if we could come over to the State Department, and we of course said, 'Sure, we'd love to!'"

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